US military to slash troops in Syria to under 1,000
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A soldier from the US-led coalition holds the hand of a boy during a joint US- Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) patrol in the countryside of Qamishli in north-eastern Syria.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON - The United States will roughly halve the number of troops it has deployed in Syria to less than 1,000 in the coming months, the Pentagon said on April 18.
Washington has had troops in Syria for years as part of international efforts against the Islamic State (IS) group, which rose out of the chaos of the country’s civil war to seize swaths of territory there and in neighbouring Iraq over a decade ago.
The brutal Islamist terrorists have since suffered major defeats in both countries, but still remain a threat.
“Today the secretary of defense directed the consolidation of US forces in Syria... to select locations,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement, without specifying the sites where this would take place.
“This deliberate and conditions-based process will bring the US footprint in Syria down to less than 1,000 US forces in the coming months,” he said.
“As this consolidation takes place, consistent with President Trump’s commitment to peace through strength, US Central Command will remain poised to continue strikes against the remnants of (IS) in Syria,” Mr Parnell added, referring to the military command responsible for the region.
The 2014 onslaught by IS prompted a US-led air campaign in support of local ground forces – Iraqi government units spearheaded by special operations troops, and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Washington also deployed thousands of American personnel to advise and assist local forces, with US troops in some cases directly fighting the terror group.
After years of bloody warfare, Iraq’s prime minister announced a final victory over IS in December 2017, while the SDF proclaimed the defeat of the group’s “caliphate” in March 2019 after seizing its final bastion in Syria.
But IS still have some fighters in the countryside of both countries, and US forces have long carried out periodic strikes and raids to help prevent the group’s resurgence. AFP
